Really, Really Super
by Chelle Storey-Daniel
Summary: Arizona rethinks her stance on Callie being a newborn. And Callie literally knocks her off her feet.


*~*~*~*~

I'm in a bad mood.

Actually, that's putting in mildly. In the four hours that I have been at work ... I have told off three interns, had a twenty minute argument with my mother on the cell phone, and gotten smacked in the face by a patient who didn't like the pain he felt when I set the break in his arm. To say that I'm in a bad mood is probably the understatement of the century and that mood worsens when Julie, the woman that Arizona had a date with, steps onto the elevator and smiles at me.

I scowl and concentrate on my phone until she says, "So, you really like her, huh?"

I don't look at her. "What?"

"Arizona. Dr. Robbins. She's pretty super and you really like her. You really, really like her."

I do look her way now and I note that her scrubs have monkeys on them. Maybe it's a pediatric thing. They're all batshit crazy. Who adds 'super' and 'really, really' into conversation anyway. "Excuse me, who are you?"

"I'm Julie. I'm a scrub nurse. Arizona's scrub nurse to be exact. I was with her the other night. Her date? I - I'm the one who told her about you and Erica Hahn. I mean, it was pretty obvious that you two were a couple. When Hahn left and you fell apart ---" she notices the look on my face. "I just mean that it was pretty obvious."

"Why are you talking to me?"

She blanches and clears her throat, glancing up at the numbers on the elevator. "She likes you, too. A lot. I just thought you should know that she didn't kiss me good night. As a matter of fact ... she didn't finish our date at all. She left not long after you did. Said she had a headache."

"Really? Really?" I ask mockingly, narrowing my eyes. "Super. That would be super if I gave a shit."

The doors slide open and I brush past Mark who is waiting to enter the lift. He says my name twice, but I ignore him. I round the corner and seek shelter in an on call room and a moment later, the door is shoved open and Sloan says, "Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"Shut up. Or leave."

"Is there a lesbian crisis that I don't know about? Did Ellen and Portia break up? Because I finally met your Louisiana and she's just as rude as you are."

"Arizona," I correct. "And she is not *my* Arizona. She is not *remotely* my Arizona. She called me a newborn."

"Ouch." Mark shuts the door and leans back against it. "In what context?"

"In the context of ... 'no, I don't want to date you because I work with newborns all day and don't want to date one'." I massage my forehead. "She called me a *baby*."

"You asked her on a date?! Go, Torres."

"Shut up. She turned me down."

"I don't get it. She kissed you."

"True. But that was before she found out that I was a newbie at the women thing." I take a deep breath. "She's got a rainbow bumper sticker, Mark. She's dating a female nurse. People KNOW that she's gay and ... well, it's just a rumor about me. So, she thinks I'm a newborn, that I'm experimenting and going through a phase."

"Aren't you?"

"What?"

"Going through a phase? Because you need to piss or get off the pot at this point."

"YOU ARE NOT HELPING!"

"If I say something to you ... do you promise not to hit me?"

"I make no promises. Violence is fun," I tell him. "Especially today."

He walks across the room and opens a door. "This," he says, his eyes on me. "is a closet. You and Erica, you were basically standing in there together, having bad sex and -"

"We had bad sex ONCE. Only once. It got better."

"Okay, so you had better sex in there, but you were in there, in the dark, hiding out. The only time you came out of the closet, Cal, was to test your theories with me and then you ran back in. And I'm not faulting you for that because you were nervous and scared and this was new for you." He shuts the door and steps in front of it. "This is Montana. She's outside the closet, happily displays her rainbow bumper sticker, and dates the nurses. Montana doesn't care that she's out of the closet or that everyone knows. So, to her, *you* are the closet. And she doesn't want to go back in there. Because there's a lot more living outside of it than in."

"Mark, her name is-"

"Think about it like this. You were ready to be married to O'Malley, God help you, and you thought he was there, too. You thought that he was committed to being a husband and committed to you, but that wasn't the case. You weren't just on separate pages, you were in separate books. So, for Mississippi, you're a great big caution flag because you have the potential of changing your mind about who you are."

I bite my bottom lip. "I hate you when you're sensible."

He gives me a smile and sits down beside me on the bed. "For what it's worth, I was also in the closet with Lexie and -"

"Oh! So *that* is how she broke your dick. There wasn't enough room to -"

"Metaphorically, dipshit. And now we're out. Everyone knows that we're out and it's not a secret. It's liberating in a way. I kissed her during breakfast and again during lunch."

"You got your ass kicked for it, Mark."

"True, but on the plus side, you've already gotten your ass kicked, too. By Hahn leaving you. It's done. You can't be hurt like that again. So, come out of the closet, Callie, take a deep breath and shut the door behind you." He nudges me with his shoulder. "All your friends already got the memo. And if you paid attention to the hospital gossip at all ... you'd realize that everyone else knows, too. You're the last one to know that you're gay."

"I'm not -"

"Callie?"

"What?!"

"The last time we had sex ... of course you enjoyed it, because I'm just that good ... but you called me Erica. Twice. You were thinking of her the entire time. And you didn't even realize you were doing it."

My eyes widen. "Really?"

"Really, really," he assures me. "Now, why don't you go talk to Idaho and -"

"Arizona."

"- tell her that you like her. Tell her that you're worth the risk and that you're ready."

"She called me a *newborn*."

"Then go prove you're a woman."

*~*~*~*~

I sit in the on call room alone until someone pages me to the emergency room. I can hear a child sobbing as I approach the curtain and Arizona appears from behind it as I reach for it. She grabs my extended hand and pulls me into a nearby consult room. "Joseph Lackey, age five. He took a pretty bad spill down the stairs. I need you to take a look at his leg. I think it's broken, but the x-rays were pretty bad because he kept moving around."

I glance down at my hand, the one she is still holding. She has a silver ring on her middle finger and another one on her thumb. Her skin is pale against mine and her long fingers are warm against my cool ones. "That's fine. We may need to sedate him to get a better shot of his leg and -"

"His mother is all 'hug the earth and don't use drugs' so good luck with that."

"Hmm." I tug my hand a little and she lets it go. "I'll see what I can do."

I start to head out the door when she says my name. Calliope. She's the only person alive who calls me that. I correct my parents, my aunts, my uncles ... hell, everyone ... and make them call me Callie. But she says it and it slides over my skin like warm water. She says it ... and all I can think about is how good it would sound in a whisper against my ear.

She takes a step forward and pushes the door closed, giving us a little privacy. "Look, I wanted to talk to you about the other night."

I feel my spine straighten and square my shoulders. "It's fine."

"No, it's really not. I didn't mean to embarrass you in front of Julie or -"

"Did you mean to embarrass me when you shot me down before that?"

"Oh." She puts her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. I stare at the monkey on her chest and think about the monkey that's on my back. "I probably should have chosen my words a little better, Calliope, but -"

"But you didn't." I let my gaze move up from the monkey to stare at her face. She's worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and her blue eyes are suffocating me, pinning me with something like accusation. It's infuriating. "Here's the thing, Dr. Robbins-"

"You can call me Arizona."

"No, thanks," I snap. "Maybe you were born knowing that you're gay, but I wasn't. Maybe you took a girl to Prom and never looked twice at a man, but that wasn't the case for me. This is new. But you know what? You had a first, too. You had a first the same way that Erica was my first. I can only hope your second was nicer to you than you have been to me."

I turn to open the door, but she grabs my arm. It's the same way that I grabbed hers after she told me that she wouldn't go on a date with me. I let her pull me around and I work hard to look anywhere but her face ... because I'm starting to realize that her face and those dimples of hers are my greatest weakness. We stand there circling the issue in silence until she finally realizes that her fingernails are leaving half moons on my arm. She apologizes, rubs her hand over the marks, and then says, "You're right. I haven't been fair to you. In my defense, though, I really thought that you were gay and -"

"Who says I'm not?"

She frowns, making a little line appear in her forehead. I have to fist my hands to keep from touching it. It takes her a second to find her words and I can tell by the way she opens her mouth and closes it a few times that she's being careful. "The thing is," she finally says, "I can't be someone's experiment again. You were right. I had a first and I was so in love with her that I couldn't stand it and when she left me, it nearly destroyed me. And my second ... she was a random woman that I met at a bar and took home with me. She was nice, she was great in bed, and she was also gone when I woke up and I never saw her again. I don't want to be someone that you take home, Cal, because I have a tendency to stay afterward and I don't want to watch anyone else walk out the door."

"Well, we have that in common. In case you didn't hear *all* the gossip -"

"I don't want to hear any more gossip about you," Arizona says. "I want to hear it from you. I want to hear *everything*. I want you to tell me about Botswana and about how you wound up married to George O'Malley. I want to hear what it was about Erica that you fell for and why you live with Cristina Yang when you're rich and how you wound up living in the basement before that and -"

"Jesus Christ! Do people around here talk about anyone other than me?"

"You're interesting. People are interested. Some of them are really, really -"

"Stop with the 'really, really'!" I shake my head, but I have to laugh a little. People apparently know more about me than I know about myself. Mark was right. "I should really go check on your patient."

"Calliope?"

"You can call me Callie."

"If I have to live with Arizona then you have to live with Calliope."

"How did you get that name anyway?"

"Come on a date with me and I'll tell you." Her dimples make their grand entrance. "There's a cute little Italian restaurant near the Archfield and I'd love to take you there. You know, assuming you like Italian."

"I like you," I tell her. And then I want to beat my head against the wall because it's mortifying to admit that and even more mortifying when she doesn't say anything in return. I'm going to KILL Mark Sloan.

I watch her nervously shift her weight to her toes and then she drops her feet flat. The next thing I know ... she's lying on her back and I see wheels spinning on the bottom of her shoes. I swoop down and grab her, pulling her into a sitting position. "Are you okay? Arizona?"

She looks up at me, shell shocked. "That has *never* happened before."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm ... stunned."

Pushing myself to my feet, I hold out a hand to her. She takes it and lets me help her stand, but she doesn't let go of me once she's upright. "Are you -"

"Hey, Calliope, guess what?"

I shake my head. "I don't do guessing games."

"You're the first person to ever knock me off my feet."

"I didn't touch you."

"Wanna bet?"

It's my turn to smile and I do just that.

She lifts her hand to my cheek and then slides it around to the back of my neck. She doesn't need to tug me downward to meet her lips. I'm already on my way and I finally know what it sounds like when she whispers my name ... because she does that when we pull apart and she hugs me. My hands are on her slim hips when she says, "I really don't have a patient for you to see. I was just ... I was trying to think of a good reason to talk to you."

I pull back, giving her my full attention. "Is that right?"

"Well, yeah. I figured you wouldn't come if I asked you to meet me for a talk. People also say that you're incredibly stubborn and -"

"Don't listen to the gossip anymore."

"No?"

"You shouldn't. It's not always right. Just this morning I heard that you don't kiss on the first date and that can't be right because you've kissed me *twice* and we haven't officially had one yet."

Her dimples vanish when her mouth drops open.

I wink at her and open the door. "I'll see you later."

"Wait! When? Do you want to have dinner tonight?"

Meredith Grey is a few feet away from me talking to Izzie Stevens. They've both stopped chatting and are looking at Arizona with interest. They're also looking at *me* with interest. It's now or never, I think.

I take a few steps back toward the conference room and slide my finger over the front of Arizona's lab coat, then I reach up and trail my thumb over her bottom lip. She leans into my touch, into me. With my lips just inches from hers, I say, "Why don't you let me cook for you? I live across the street, apartment two. I'll see you at seven."

"It's a date."

When I turn around again, she's beside me instead of behind me.

And I hear the door close when the back of her hand brushes over mine.

Mark was right. He was really, really right. There's a whole lot more living on this side of the door.

And that's super! Really, really super.

God help me.

*~*~

The End


End file.
